Changes to the 2022 Academic Regulations

Changes to the 2022 Academic Regulations that were approved by the Academic Board in late 2021 have now taken effect.

Key changes to the regulations include the following:

• The date that any notice or advice to a student is deemed to have been received by post has been updated to qualify that the date is subject to any published service disruption alerts.
• It has been clarified that a student’s full legal name is required for their student record and will be used on all official academic documents.
• Students are prohibited from seeking credit for a failed unit unless they have completed equivalent tertiary study after the failure in the unit.
• A School may cancel a student’s enrolment in a unit prior to census if they have not attempted any assessment, or have failed to participate in a unit (where relevant), or have not engaged with the LMS in the case of online study.
• A new ‘Abandoned’ status will apply to students who have failed to re-enrol for four consecutive standard study periods. In this case a student will be required to lodge a new application for admission.
• A student may withdraw without academic penalty up to last day of classes in each study period, or two-thirds of any placement in a Professional Experience Unit or unit containing professional experience. Any withdrawal without academic penalty after that time can only be approved by an Executive Dean or Head of School as a result of a student appeal or formal complaint.
• The Withdrawn Fail (WN) grade is no longer required. Once the date for withdrawing without academic penalty has passed, students will receive a fail result (NN (Fail), NU (Fail Ungraded) or NL (Fail Absent)) as was the case before these changes.
• The term Professional Experience Coordinator has been defined in the ACU Glossary of Student and Course Terms following further expansion of titles for these roles across the university.
• The ‘at risk’ process has been updated so that students will also be warned that further failure may mean they are also at risk of losing access to Commonwealth financial assistance (CSP or FEE-HELP), where relevant.
• The ‘show cause’ process has been updated to reflect that the regulations delegate termination of enrolment decisions to the Course Coordinator (and the Course Coordinator issues the notices).

More information

Detailed briefing notes on the changes to the 2022 Academic Regulations were sent to stakeholders by email in January. Any interested staff who did not receive the briefing notes and who would like more detailed information on the changes listed above should contact Kerry.Blair@acu.edu.au or Catherine.McKiver@acu.edu.au.